


learning to swim

by cirque



Series: All our lives in the wind [3]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Female Friendship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28676523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: That chasm between them stretches on. There’s a lake in the middle filled with all the things Claire cannot say.
Relationships: Sherry Birkin & Claire Redfield
Series: All our lives in the wind [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/234243
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/gifts).



_There are so many oceans that stand in our way_

_But I'm learning to swim I'll be there any day_

Before TerraSave, before WilPharma, ( _after Raccoon_ ), she gets an apartment in a town far enough away from Umbrella’s crap as to be completely unaware of its existence. Not a red-and-white labelled pill bottle in sight. 

It reminds her of Hallmark movies, the kind of place where nothing of interest has ever happened. Her apartment is above a store run by an old couple who must be at least four-hundred years old. It’s a small place, decorated in the fifties and perhaps a little _stale_ for her tastes, but that’s fine.

There’s a spare bedroom for Sherry, a little twin bed and a writing desk for homework. Claire doesn’t expect they’ll let her come visit right away, at least not while they’re still fighting for custody. (“It’s her blood they want, not her,” Leon had said, last time she’d seen him).

Chris visits, declares it “quaint” and, after some elbowing from Jill, tells her it’s a nice enough place. He buys her a cactus and she kills it in record time.

A year after Raccoon, when she’s almost done having nightmares, they let Sherry come to stay. Claire walks to meet her at the bus stop and she’s nervous the whole way. What if Sherry blames her for abandoning her? What if it was only the shared trauma and now that they’re together again they’ll realize they have nothing in common at all? What if…? The thoughts race around in her head like a fox chasing a rabbit.

She’s had limited updates about Sherry, mostly just cursory things, and so she doesn’t really know where the girl is at these days. They run tests, that’s all they’ll say. Claire is not really looking forward to getting the truth out of Sherry.

Claire arrives early. Probably the nerves. She taps her foot and looks around at the deserted bus station, the beige scrubby streets, the ancient trees that bow over the sidewalk. A tumbleweed goes by, practically.

Her stomach is in knots, and she’s contemplating eating the peanut butter cup in her pocket when the bus comes staggering down the street. It’s an ancient thing, and the windows are thick with dust and age.

The bus basically sputters out, the engine dying in a heaving sound during which heavy smoke comes billowing out the back. Fantastic. Claire peers around for Sherry as the occupants come spilling out, lugging behind them their assorted luggage and backpacks and, surprisingly, a whole damn string quartet.

She’s nodding politely at the viola guy when she catches sight of a pair of scuffed blue sneakers, bare knobbly knees, a cute little paisley dress. She catches her breath.

She expects to cry, weirdly, but her throat seems to close up as Sherry trips ever further down the steps. Tears will not come. Maybe it’s her newfound bravery? Maybe, after an outbreak, you just don’t cry like you used to? There’s no measuring stick for this.

Sherry disembarks and the bus door hisses shut. She looks pale, and too damn thin, like a moderate gust of wind could carry her off. Have they even been feeding her?

The driver looks around for several drawn-out moments but apparently further customers are not coming because there’s no one waiting, no one really in sight, except for Claire and Sherry.

“Sherry!” She tries to be bright and happy, she really does, but Sherry is not a little girl anymore and she sees right through it.

She winces as Claire says her name.

“You made it,” Claire continues. “Wow, you cut your hair!” She smiles, and reaches out to take her backpack and haul it onto her own shoulders. It’s heavy, perhaps too heavy for a skinny little thing like Sherry. “Jeez, what’ve you got in here, rocks?”

“Medications,” Sherry mumbles. Right. Of course.

Claire blushes. “It’s fine! How was the journey?”

“Fine.” She’s looking at her shoes, toeing at the loose rocks and pebbles.

“Okay,” Claire plasters a grin onto her face. “That’s good. Do you wanna walk? It’s just around the corner.”

“‘Kay.”

Claire does not know what to do, or where to look, or what. She alternates between studying Sherry’s wan face and staring at her own boots, watching the dust accumulate on her toes.

“It’s a pretty crappy town,” she says like it’s some sort of apology.

Sherry follows her silently, a lost lamb clinging to the shepherd, except the shepherd just abandoned the lamb for a whole damn year and let her get poked and prodded like a test subject. Ouch. 

“I’m sorry for--” she gestures vaguely, but Sherry isn’t looking. “Y’know--everything that happened. Leaving you.” There, she’s said it aloud, and it hurts her to remember that day. She spends so much of her energy on _not_ thinking about RC and its aftermath. That’s why she came out here after all. To forget. “To be able to forget means sanity,” wasn’t that what Jack London had written once? College and studying and assignments--it all seems so long ago. When had she grown up?

“It’s fine,” Sherry shrugs her off.

“No, it isn’t,” Claire insists. “I never meant to… abandon you.”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Sherry says again, and what’s with the lack of eye contact? “I’m not your kid. You don’t have to look after me.”

That stings, but only because Claire lets it. She did leave the poor girl, after all, so maybe she deserves to feel a little pain.

“I’m glad you came to visit,” Claire says, and hopes she’s managed to conceal the hurt.

The town isn’t very big and so in no time at all they are standing at the bottom of the staircase that leads to Claire’s apartment. They are cast iron and rickety and do not look very inviting, but they managed to stand up to Chris lugging all her furniture up so she trusts them.

“It’s just up here,” she says, pointlessly.

Sherry nods and follows her up, onto the little hallway that leads to Claire’s apartment. And the power room, but she’s never been in there. She unlocks her door with shaking hands, and kicks it open. The sound makes Sherry flinch, and Claire groans inside, thinking how stupid she is, how insensitive, how _of course_ Sherry is still edgy about loud noises.

“Sorry,” she says, but it’s a moot point. Sherry just hangs back behind her, her face white and lost.

Claire decides to move on, and leads Sherry into the apartment with a dramatic flourish of her arm, as if to say _ta-da!_

“It’s not much,” Claire says. “But it’s home.”

Sherry is looking at the joint living room and kitchen, at the threadbare sofa that they’d liberated from some guy’s house clearance, at the little breakfast bar bearing the remnants of Claire’s French toast, at the posters on the wall (Flaming Lips’s _Zaireeka,_ cut from a magazine and curling at the edges).

Claire doesn’t know what she expects, but it is not the look of abject indifference on Sherry’s face. Honestly, she’s starting to creep her out.

Claire decides to power on through the awkwardness. “Do you want to see your room? We can put your bag in there?”

“Sure,” Sherry shrugs.

Claire walks the twelve awkward strides to the spare room, and gently toes the door open, revealing the little bed ready made-up, the view of the town hall from the window, the little desk upon which Claire has placed a pile of Lego. She places Sherry’s heavy bag at the bottom of the bed. Its black and neon orange design seems off in the beige room.

“Shall I take my shoes off?”

It’s the first unprompted thing Sherry has said to her, and Claire tries not to let it show.

“If you want. You don’t have to. I don’t.”

“Okay.” The sneakers stay on.

“Are you hungry? It’s dinnertime.”

Sherry considers for a moment. She chews her lip. She’s still not meeting Claire’s eyes.

“I guess,” she says, eventually.

“C’mon, I’ll take you to my favourite ice cream shop. They do waffles, too.” Claire expects enthusiasm (what kid doesn’t like ice cream?) but instead what she gets is more vague disinterest. 

“Sure.”

Claire feels terrible as they return to the street. What have they done to this poor kid? Admittedly, Claire didn’t spend very long around Sherry, but where has the hopeful little girl gone, who’d taken their hands and begged for a puppy? Then again, the trauma must have sunk in. 

And why is Claire expecting her to act any different now they are reunited? Claire’s just some woman Sherry met on the worst day of her life.

“Look,” she says, trying to bridge the gap between them, a chasm some hundred-miles wide. “I really am sorry about leaving like that. You know why I did it, I just--that’s not important. What is important is you. I care about you Sherry, and I promise you I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you’re okay. I just… don’t have a lot of power. You understand, right?”

Sherry nods. She finally meets Claire’s eyes. “I understand.”

“No,” Claire can feel her throat closing up again. “I don’t want you to think I’m just another adult in your life who’s going to let you down. I won’t do that.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it. I swear it, Sherry.”

There’s a little glimmer of hope in those pale blue eyes. “Swear? On your brother’s life?”

“I swear it, on Chris’s life.”

A little smile teases at the corner of Sherry’s mouth.

“Now,” Claire says, trying to wade through the awkwardness. “Ice cream! What flavor do you like best?” Ice cream for dinner. Her mother would riot.

“Chocolate chip.”

“The only acceptable answer.”

They round the corner and the ice cream store welcomes them, luring them in with its pastel signage and the aroma of heaven. Claire has spent too much time here, probably.

They take their seats up at the bar. Missy, the woman who owns the place, smiles big and wide at them. She is wearing a pink and white striped t-shirt and has on the most ridiculous hat in the shape of an ice cream cone.

“You’re a new face,” she says to Sherry, who is suddenly extremely interested in the buttons on her dress.

Claire smiles. “This is Sherry. She’ll be visiting me sometimes.”

“Well,” Missy claps her hands. “Welcome to our little slice of paradise. I’m Missy.”

“Hello,” Sherry says.

“Would you like some ice cream?”

“Yes please.”

Missy takes their orders and grabs two cones, filling them both to bursting with chocolate ice cream, and chocolate sprinkles, and whipped cream, and a marshmallow or two. She slips them onto a paper plate and adds a Hershey bar each.

“Voila!” Missy pushes the finished products over the bar to them.

“Excellent!” Claire grabs hers with enthusiasm. Sherry is a little more hesitant.

“I haven’t had ice cream since…” And Claire knows she’s remembering her parents.

“What, you don’t get ice cream where you live?” She means it to be a joke, a little dig, but Sherry sighs.

“Simmons says it’s bad for me.”

“Well he’s not wrong,” Claire says diplomatically, “but sometimes we enjoy things that aren’t good for us.”

“So it’s bad to eat ice cream?”

“No! God no. Eat as much as you want when you’re with me.”

Sherry seems to take this as permission because she lifts her cone up and takes a few experimental bites.

“See?” Claire laughs. “The world didn’t end.” _Again_ , she realizes too late.

Sherry ignores her and continues with the cone. Claire frees a marshmallow and savors it like she’s never had sugar before.

“So,” she says, “what’s it like with Simmons? Other than not allowing you ice cream, is he okay?”

She had wanted to vet the people who were vying for Sherry’s custody, but she was just some nineteen-year-old with PTSD, what could she really do? She had hoped, perhaps in vain, that Sherry would end up in caring hands. How terrible, she remembers thinking, to be so completely adrift, at the mercy of strangers.

Sherry thinks on her answer. The ice cream starts to melt.

“He’s alright, I guess.”

“Nope,” Claire says, “I want more than that. Does he treat you well?”

“Yeah.”

Claire isn’t sure how to ask the question she desperately wants to ask. _Does he hurt you?_ That chasm stretches on. There’s a lake in the middle filled with all the things Claire cannot say. The pain inside her sinks like a stone.

“And how’s school?”

“Fine,” she sighs. “Simmons homeschools me. He says it’s better that way.”

Better for whom?

Sherry chews her lip. “Why couldn’t I live with you?”

Oh. That lake grows deeper. “I…” but what can she say? ‘I was a mess’? ‘I was just a scared kid myself’? 

“I don’t think that would have been good for either of us. I would have loved that, though. I was in a… not good place, after…” she leaves it hanging. She doesn’t want to say it. Saying it makes it too real. “And you needed stability. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to! I don’t want you to think that. They wouldn’t let me, anyway.”

“Because of Umbrella?”

“Partly, yes. They were worried someone might try to… take you.” And partly because they wanted to control her, control her every movement, control the valuable antibodies living in her blood, but Claire isn’t saying that.

“Anyway,” Claire tries to steer the conversation away from that. “How have you been? Sleeping okay?”

“I get nightmares.” Sherry seems almost embarrassed to admit it.

“I get ‘em too,” Claire assures her.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Most nights. Even now, after a year.”

“Do you think they’ll ever go away?”

“Maybe. In time. Some things just take a lot of healing, that’s all. We saw a lot of bad stuff. It’s bound to take a little while for our brains to adjust.” But she knows as good as anyone that this mess wasn’t just limited to Raccoon City. The viruses are out there, right now, in the hands of men willing to use them for ill means. Their troubles aren’t over yet, but she doesn’t want Sherry to think about that. 

Sherry’s innocence is a fragile thing, something that has been stomped all over like a bully in a field of flowers. Claire cannot explain how important it is to her that Sherry gets to be a kid, for as long as possible.

“Are you tired? You look tired, we should head back.”

They thank Missy for their food, and head back out onto the street. The sun is setting low in the sky, coloring everything purple and pink, a pretty smattering of watercolors along the horizon. Claire admires it as they settle into an easy silence. 

They climb the stairs and Claire unlocks the door, careful this time not to make a noise. Sherry hovers awkwardly in the doorway while Claire collapses on the couch with a groan.

“You can sit down,” she says, “you don’t have to wait for my permission. Mi casa es su casa.”

Sherry perches on the end of an armchair. She folds her fingers in her lap.

“Do you want to go to sleep?”

“Can I shower first?”

“Of course.”

Claire fetches towels and arranges them on the little rail in the bathroom. Sherry digs through her bag for pajamas and comes up with a mismatched tee and shorts set. She disappears into the bathroom and Claire just sits there listening to the water run, listening to Sherry clumsily dropping the shampoo. She almost starts to doze off.

Eventually the water shuts off and Sherry emerges from the bathroom, red with the heat, her short hair sticking up wildly.

“Feel better?”

“Yeah,” Sherry shrugs. 

As Claire looks, she can see pinpricks on the girl’s bare pale arms, little needle marks that run the length of her biceps, each one blooming its own purplish bruise. Both arms, really? Her knees are scuffed, as though she’d been shoved downwards, and there are bruises mottling her chest, from what little Claire can see that isn’t covered by pajamas. 

Sherry sees her looking. “I have to inject myself. Sometimes I do it wrong, and it bruises.”

“What do you inject yourself with?”

There’s a pause, and Sherry frowns. “I don’t know.”

“That’s okay.”

“I need to inject myself now,” Sherry says, and Claire follows her into the spare room. She grabs her bag and starts taking things out, setting them on the bed in some sort of order. There are vials and syringes and capped needles, and several blister packs of pills. Sherry picks at least a dozen pills into the palm of her hand and swallows them one by one with her water bottle. Then she moves on to the vials. She stabs the needle through the top like she’s a professional, like she’s done this a hundred times, and draws up some of the yellowish liquid within. She gets rid of the air bubbles then turns her attention to her left arm, near the shoulder.

“Are you--”

“I’m fine.” She smiles thinly, and injects herself without so much as a flinch. “I’m used to it.”

Claire inspects the discarded vial. It has a bunch of numbers on, and a bar code, but no identifying information. She suspects Simmons has it decanted, though she wonders why he’s keeping it a secret from Sherry herself. 

Sherry finishes up, tossing the used needle into the little bin she extracts from the bottom of the bag.

“Are you done?”

“Yeah. I can go to sleep now.”

 _Jeez_ , Claire thinks, _what the fuck?_

She plasters a practised smile on her face. “Good night, sweetie. We’ll go to the movies or something tomorrow, yeah? Do something fun.”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

“Do you want some cocoa, or anything?”

“I’m not allowed any before bed. It’s bad for your teeth.”

“Right.” 

Sherry waves and pads her way barefoot towards the bed, closing the door firmly behind her. Claire is grateful for the reprieve to be honest, she feels as though she constantly has to act happy for Sherry’s sake, and it reminds her so viscerally of that night, those monsters, that whole _time_ in her life. They are not pleasant memories, for sure.

She had thought she was over the worst of it but now it seems to be creeping up on her like a sickness. They’d all been made to see therapists by the authorities, as proof they weren’t lying, but Claire struggles to remember anything helpful they’d said. Maybe her brain has blocked it out?

Either way, she goes to sleep fretful and when she dreams, she dreams of Sherry, and a red jacket slick with blood.

She wakes with a start. It’s still dark. A scream, shriller than shrill, cutting through the nighttime silence.

“Sherry?”

She staggers upright and hauls herself to the spare room. She shoves the door aside, and there is Sherry, upright in bed, blonde hair a mess, sobbing her little heart out.

“What…?”

Sherry looks without seeing. She is still asleep. Sleep-walking. Sleep- _screaming._ She yells again, and a third time.

“No,” she wails.

“Sherry, wake up!”

The girl’s foggy eyes clear and she blinks several times, looking at Claire as though she is surprised to see her.

“Claire? What’s wrong?”

Claire laughs, uneasy. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong is you were screaming in your sleep. Bad dream?”

Sherry looks around at the unfamiliar surroundings. It must be jolting.

“Y-yeah,” she says, “bad dream. Just the usual kind.”

“Would it help to talk about it?” Claire sits at the end of the bed, and Sherry subconsciously shifts away from her.

“I’m used to them…” she looks down, knotting her fingers in her lap.

“You can talk about it if you want. You don’t have to be brave all the time.”

Sherry chews her lip. A battle is going on behind her wide, worried eyes. “Okay,” she starts, then pauses again. She inches further away from Claire. “It’s… my dad. Remember what he was like? After, y’know, he got sick.”

Claire remembers. How could she ever forget? The red raw skin, the twitching musculature bared and pulsing, the tendons and the gristle, the blood oozing free, the yellowish eye staring through her, staring _into_ her brain. She has had this nightmare countless times.

“Yeah?” she prompts.

Sherry twists her fingers around. “Well, he’s following me. I’m alone in the dream. He’s following me and he wants to…” she shivers.

Claire is shocked. Truthfully, she hadn’t thought that Sherry truly understood what her father had been trying to do. She thought Sherry had been spared that much, but apparently not.

“It’s okay,” she says, though it is very very not okay.

“Yeah. Well, he was trying to… y’know, and I was running through the sewers--why is it always the sewers?”

“Dark, creepy, smells weird.”

Sherry giggles despite herself. “Yeah. Well we’re running through the sewers and I come to a dead end. I climb up but he reaches out with his claws and grabs my feet and pulls me back down. I land in all the icky water and then I’m thrashing around while he… y’know. And that’s it.”

“And you have this dream a lot?”

“Most nights.”

Damn. Claire wonders whether or not they made Sherry see a therapist, too. She guesses not.

“It’s over now, though,” Claire means it to be comforting, but she knows it is not over, not even a little bit. It will drag on, forever scarring their lives, the threat of bioterror and Wesker’s revenge ever looming. A nightmare, come to life. She doesn’t like to lie to Sherry, but she wants the poor girl to sleep easy.

Sherry lies back down, away from Claire. “Yeah,” she says, and Claire knows she doesn’t believe it either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Cutlery? For pizza? Strange child.”

She’d bought a new motorcycle some time after arriving in town. The old one got a bomb dropped on it, and it wasn’t exactly in good shape before that, so she kind of thought she deserved one. The old one had been second hand; this one is new, and shiny, and fast.

She sits out on the street with it most mornings, tinkering away, tightening valves, polishing the rims. She has a soft cloth she uses just for this purpose and it feels supple as worn leather in her hands. She’s covered in oil and grease but it’s fine.

The sun is high already and Sherry comes down the steps, wearing another paisley print dress, this one in shades of green and yellow.

“Good morning sunshine!” Claire says.

Sherry sits on the edge of the sidewalk. “Good morning.”

“I left some cereal for you--”

“Yeah. I already ate it.”

Claire laughs. Sherry is a growing girl after all.

“What d’you wanna do today?”

Sherry considers. “Can we… go for a ride?” She points to the bike, red and chrome, resplendent in the morning sun.

Claire grins. “You will never guess what I bought for you.” She leaves Sherry hanging and jogs up the stairs, through the door, into her front room, right to the closet where she keeps her shoes. There, at the bottom, is a new pink helmet, shiny with disuse. She’d bought it before she’d even bought the apartment. Wishful thinking, maybe.

She returns to Sherry out on the sidewalk, and tosses her the helmet. “Catch!”

Sherry does, and beams up at Claire. “This is so cool.”

“I reckon Simmons might have a thing or two to say about helmet wearing,” Claire laughs.

“Yeah maybe,” Sherry mumbles, and Claire just knows she’s thinking about the price tag on her head and it’s a shame, really, to have that so close to the surface, like a wound barely healed. Claire doesn’t want that for Sherry, not today at least.

Claire shows Sherry how to put the helmet on, how to tighten the straps just right. They don’t want it falling off. She shoves her own on, mirroring the girl. 

“We _should_ be wearing leathers,” Claire points out, “but we’re not going far and we won’t be going fast.”

“Aww.”

“No way,” she warns, “Simmons would kill me.” Claire doesn’t know if they’re ready for jokes like that, but Sherry doesn’t flinch so it’s probably fine.

She swings her leg over the bike and Sherry does the same, settling behind her. There are handrails on the back of the seat but Sherry slips her arms around Claire instead, leaning in and hugging her tight.

“Hold on,” Claire tells her. “Tight. And let the bike do the work, just lean into it as we go around corners. Follow my lead, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And I won’t be able to hear you if you want to stop so just, like, poke me in the rib or something.”

“Okay.”

“And put your feet up, on the little peg, see it?”

“Yeah.”

Claire revs the engine and feels Sherry jump, but there’s nothing she can say to comfort her. It’s all noise from here on out. She feels the frame begin to warm as the engine spurs into life, and the exhaust slowly kicks up a smoke. The bike roars, putting Claire in mind of a tyrant, a monster to be killed.

She slowly drives them to the end of the street, then it’s a sharp right turn away from town and down a little country lane edged with grass and bushes and barbed wire fences. Not exactly scenic, but Claire guides them down the lane and around another corner until the landscape opens up ahead of them revealing a vista of the valley below. Everything is green or golden. There’s a lot of farmland out here and Claire can smell grass and cattle, half-muffled by the exhaust.

Claire doesn’t hear Sherry’s sharp intake of breath but she feels it on the back of her neck, and sees the wonder in the girl’s face in the mirror. She kills the engine and her ears ring for a quick second, but then Sherry’s voice filters in, excited, high-pitched:

“--seen cows before, look at them!”

“I knew you’d like it. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“It’s…” Sherry shrugs, speechless, and together they drink in the view, the sloping soft angles of meadows and hills, the stoic certainty of trees older than time, the birds that dip here and there. There’s a gentle breeze, just enough to keep them from getting too hot, and it plays with their hair.

Sherry sighs. “I never thought… I just never thought I’d get to see something like this. Something so peaceful, y’know?”

“I know,” Claire agrees. Raccoon hadn’t exactly been a font of nature, and Simmons keeps them moving but the places he picks are always, relentlessly urban. “I just wanted you to know that this place is always available to you. Whenever you want, you’re welcome.”

“Assuming Derek lets me come,” she says, with more than a hint of resentment.

“Obviously,” Claire says, and pokes her in the side. Sherry inches away. The mood between them lightens, and all traces of tension evaporate in the fresh springy air.

“Do you think Simmons would let me learn to ride a bike?”

“Like a motorcycle?” Claire frowns. The answer is probably ‘no’, too dangerous, too risky, too public. “Maybe when you’re older.”

“I bet your dad didn’t want you to ride.”

Sherry doesn’t know anything about Claire’s family, other than Chris. She doesn’t know what a shitshow it is; what a shitshow it has _always_ been. Claire’s family could almost beat the Birkins’s. Almost.

“He didn’t mind much, but my brother on the other hand…” 

“Oh,” Sherry laughs, “I bet he hated it.”

“For sure,” Claire agrees. Chris had sent her a printout of motorcycle accident statistics. In red ink. 

Sherry shuffles in her seat.

“You done?” Claire asks. “You ready to go back? I have something to show you back at the apartment.”

“Like a present?”

Claire laughs. “No, not a present. But something you’ll like, I hope.”

On the ride back they see precisely one other person, an old man Claire has seen around a few times. His name is Bill or Phil, something like that. She waves to him as they zip by, and he gives her the oddest look like he can’t believe motorcycles exist in _his_ town.

At the apartment they park up and Claire kicks the stand into place. She slips off the bike and turns to look at Sherry, who is flushed and giggling. Claire gets it. She was the same after her first ride.

“Cool huh?”

“Awesome!”

They take the stairs two at a time, spilling into the apartment. Claire crosses to her bedroom and Sherry hangs back, awkward again, out of place.

Claire digs around the bottom of her closet, searching for a certain shoebox. Doc Martens, oxblood leather, calceological perfection. 

She returns to the living room to see Sherry seated on the couch and she drops down beside her, the box front and center.

“Inside this box,” Claire says, “are little fragments of everything that happened.” They don’t talk about what happened, but they should, Claire knows; it would be good for them.

Trauma does odd things to the brain, silly things, unexplainable things. To begin with she’d doubted whether or not the whole thing had happened, if it wasn’t some crazy hallucination or a misunderstanding. As the dust settled after Raccoon, Claire’s memory sapped away. She could not be sure of anything, even though she had Chris right there telling her the truth. She wanted to forget, almost as much much as she needed to remember. Wasn't that why she'd chosen this town? 

The two extremes war inside her. They still haven't declared a winner, and yet: she had needed certainty; she had needed proof. A manageable thing, something she could put away for months at a time only to drag it back out into the light when she felt the need. 

“I call it my home base,” she says now, “somewhere I can always check in and remind myself. Because even though we wish it never happened, it _did_ happen, and it’s no good to pretend otherwise, yeah?” The irony is not lost--Claire should practice what she preaches. She shouldn't be hiding in this forgotten town. 

“Yeah.” Sherry nods but she sounds uncertain, and Claire is reminded that she is only thirteen, still just a child, and everything Claire is feeling must be magnified for Sherry.

She opens the box and tosses the lid onto the floor. Inside, photographs and newspaper clippings jostle against their confines. Claire hands one to Sherry, a snippet from the Raccoon City Times about the Arklay murders. Sherry turns it over and over in her hand, as though avoiding looking at the picture on the front. It’s of the Arklay mountains, just a passage through the hills and trees, a pretty little snapshot of the mansion. It does not betray the horrors within.

“My brother nearly died here,” Claire says, conversationally. “And a bunch of his friends _did_ die. There were only five survivors.”

“I know,” Sherry mumbles. Her face is all pinched like she’s trying to swallow back her tears. She looks like a deer in the headlines and Claire wonders if it is a kindness or a torment to show her this.

How much does Sherry know, really? And how can she possibly get through this if she doesn’t have all the facts? How can it ever be more than a nightmare if she doesn’t _understand_?

“Do you want me to stop?” Claire asks, concerned. “I can put this all away and we don’t ever have to speak about it.”

“N-no,” Sherry sort of shifts in her seat, uncomfortable but determined. Brave girl.

“How much do you know, about Umbrella?”

“They made medicines. And they paid people like my dad to make the viruses.”

“And Wesker?”

“Mr Wesker betrayed everyone, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Claire keeps her voice soft. She doesn’t want this to become a thing of fear for Sherry, she wants the girl to know it’s okay to talk about this kind of thing.

“I never liked him,” Sherry admits.

“You met him?”

“A few times. And he’s the one Mr Simmons is protecting me from?”

“Right. And what happened in Raccoon was caused by Umbrella, and by--” Claire clamps her mouth shut.

“My dad. You can say it. My dad caused all that damage, killed all those people, tried to kill you and me and Leon.”

“Yeah. There’s no point pretending it didn’t happen. But he wasn’t himself…”

“He was himself when he made the virus. It’s okay Claire, I know my parents were crappy, both of them. You don’t have to try and make me feel better about it. It’s fine.”

“And after that? Do you know anything about where I went when I left you and Leon that morning?”

Sherry shrugs. “To look for your brother, right? And you ended up in some prison.”

“Yeah, I got myself arrested. But at the Umbrella facility and the prison there were more monsters like your dad. Bio-organic weapons, they call them. And these BOWs, they weren’t all destroyed--some got out, some of their DNA is out there waiting for some sick fuck to destroy another city.”

“Oh.”

Claire moves onto the official report from Umbrella’s sentencing. There’s a lot of legal jargon but it has a happy ending. Umbrella condemned, publicly, officially, undeniably. She shows Sherry photos from the court, Chris and Jill and that weird guy O’Brian. 

“My brother and his friends are trying to do something about those BOWs. They’re setting up an organization to fight them.”

“Will you fight too?”

This is a tough one. Claire has thought long and hard on this. She is no fighter, she’s _never_ been a fighter, she’s some kid who got caught up in someone else’s mess and got lucky, somehow. Chris taught her to fight but he never imagined she’d ever have to use that knowledge.

“I’m not a fighter, Sherry.”

“You are!” she protests. “You’re so badass.”

Claire laughs it off. “What happened back then was a fluke, I’m sure. I’ll do… other things to help prevent bioterrorism.”

“What kinds of things?”

“I don’t know yet.” She has thought long and hard on this, too, but the answers are like trying to catch smoke. 

Sherry digs through the box some more. There’s a pamphlet from Umbrella extolling some wonder drug that may or may not cure cancer. There’s a cartoon on the front, several mutating cells and little pill capsules bearing swords. Ridiculous. Sherry discards it with distaste.

“You can look through this whenever you want,” Claire says. “It’s important for us to remember what happened, the people we lost, the things we saw.”

“Is it okay to think about my parents?” Her voice is small, barely a mumble, a mouse-whisper in Claire’s bland apartment. 

“Sherry! Of course it is sweetie. They were your parents. You loved them, right?”

Sherry considers before nodding slightly. “I did.”

“Well then! Of course you’re going to miss them. Missing people is what makes us human.”

“I just wasn’t sure,” the girl mumbles again. She is staring at the S.T.A.R.S group photo in her hand, crumpled, sepia, as though it were decades ago. Most of them dead, the rest of them scarred. 

“It’s always okay to miss your parents, you don’t have to hide that.” 

Claire thinks of her own parents, so inept, long dead, and she misses them like fire in her chest, like something clawing to get out.

“Thank you for showing me this,” Sherry says at last, and meets Claire’s eyes. She’s crying, but who isn’t? 

“No problem,” Claire swipes at her own tears. 

Sherry drops the photo back amongst the rest. There’s a glint of silver, a mashed bullet Claire had fished from the wreckage. Sherry touches it with the tip of her finger, reverent and hesitant, and flinches upon contact. It must be cold.

“When I’m older,” she says, “I’m joining the fight. I’ll join your brother and his friends.”

“Sherry… I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“You’re… special Sherry, yeah? I don’t want you endangering yourself like that.”

“I _am_ special,” Sherry insists, “but that’s the reason why I need to fight. Look--” she grasps for Claire’s sewing scissors where they’d been left on the coffee table. She’s been trying embroidery but it is not, she is finding, her thing.

Scissors in hand, Sherry slices at her wrist, and Claire gasps as blood bubbles forth, hot and red against the pale milky skin of Sherry’s arm. The cut is long but shallow. Still, it must sting, but Sherry does not wince.

“Just watch,” she says, as though this is a magic trick she’s performing for a captive audience.

Claire leans in. It can’t be? It is almost as if the cut is healing itself before Claire’s amazed eyes, the skin knitting itself back together, scarring then fading entirely. Fuck.

“See?” Sherry waves her arm around, pointing at the perfect place where a wound ought to be.

“Oh,” Claire says, and her brain thinks: BOW, mutant, viral, _wrong_. How has she missed this? How has it possibly evaded her notice that Sherry is somehow permanently changed by what she went through? Why has no one mentioned it?

White hot anger boils to the surface. Fucking Simmons. But she bites her tongue. Sherry is only thirteen, she doesn’t need Claire’s panic.

“I didn’t know that,” Claire says carefully.

Sherry nods. “Yeah. It’s pretty cool, right?”

“Cool?” That is not the word Claire would choose. “It’s…”

“It’s because of the virus,” Sherry explains, “it messed with my DNA. That’s what the doctors say, anyway.”

Claire wonders: how did they discover Sherry had this ability in the first place? How many cuts did they inflict, for science?

“I’m not going to turn into a monster or anything, I’m still me, but I just have this extra thing. Derek says it’s a gift.”

“I bet he does.” Claire bets his eyes lit up when he found out. How much blood did they take, trying to replicate the effects of G? “Sherry, who knows about this?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “A few people, I guess. I don’t know their names.”

Of course.

“Let’s keep it a secret, okay?”

“Sure.”

To Sherry it is normal, and so Claire must pretend it is normal too. She crosses to the kitchen and flips on the coffee maker. Totally normal. She needs caffeine. What’s more normal than having a cup of coffee while you talk to a little girl with literal superpowers?

Sherry however powers on. “Do you know when Leon will visit me again?”

Claire has no idea where Leon is. Who does? They send him all over. They don’t really talk, not any more; he is not the cute cop she met that night.

“I dunno, Sherry. He’s busy, very busy.” Leon had given up his future to keep Sherry safe, but all along they’d all been deceived. Sherry was never safe.

“That’s what my parents used to say.”

Claire realises the truth of it with a sting to her heart. Sherry has swapped two useless parental figures for two more.... “It’s complicated, honey.”

Sherry stands up, almost five feet of rage. “That’s what they used to say! That’s what everyone says! Can’t you just tell me the truth?” The chasm and its lake grow ever deeper. It’s dark down there.

The truth is not palatable, but Sherry knows that, doesn’t she?

“Okay,” Claire breathes, finishing the coffee as though they are having any other conversation. Totally normal. “The truth is, we’re at war. It’s pretty crucial that Leon and my brother and the rest of them get a handle on all the various viral strains that are out there, and put a stop to Wesker and Umbrella before they do any more damage. It’s a war, Sherry, and Leon is literally being sent all over the planet in an attempt to keep the war from arriving on our doorstep. He’s doing this to keep us safe. So yeah, he’s busy. But we have to hope it won’t always be like this. There’s an end in sight, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Sherry, surprised, sits back down with a groan. “I didn’t realize it was so… serious.”

“Yeah, more people are dying everyday. Eventually that number will be higher than the population of Raccoon City. And it will _keep_ happening, unless we put the work in now.” 

Leon has so much on his plate, he doesn’t have the time or energy to be worrying too much about a teenage girl. He’d tried, of course, to be there for her, but that wasn’t his wheelhouse.

“Okay,” Sherry looks cowed, her shoulders hunched.

“I didn’t want you to have to worry about all that,” Claire says. She takes a gulp of her coffee and it burns going down. Good. “I wanted to keep all that from you for as long as possible, but I see now that that was wrong. I shouldn’t be hiding things from you, you’re right. But… I just want you to be a kid, Sherry, for as long as possible. Do you understand?”

Her face says no but she nods. “Sure.”

The air between them is tense, like it’s thick with fog that Claire cannot hope to find her way through.

“Sherry--”

“I get it. But… I think I stopped being a kid the day my dad…” she chews her bottom lip. Her hair is a mess, her face distraught, she looks _tired._ Claire can relate.

“Why don’t we have dinner? What d’you want?” The subject change is welcome, like sunlight after a storm. Smooth sailing across their abyss. Claire basks in it while she can. “Just not ice cream again, alright?”

Sherry laughs, a real laugh. “Aw.”

“No way. I’m not sending you back to Simmons with cavities. He’d never let me see you again.”

“True,” Sherry giggles. “Can we order pizza?”

“Ah, pizza, dinner of champions. Absolutely! But… no pineapple, I forbid it.”

The evening is stretching on and Claire feels odd, adrift in the abyss. Sherry has to go back tomorrow and Claire is nervous about letting her go. It feels like a betrayal somehow. She orders pizza on autopilot (meat feast and four cheeses; not a pineapple in sight) and together they watch the door, waiting for the knock.

They still jump when it comes. A sharp rapping, thin knuckles on thin wood. Claire covers with a laugh, and goes to open the door. They exchange money and food, but Claire isn’t really focusing. The pizza boxes are steaming and wet with grease.

She hands Sherry’s over.

“Cutlery?” Sherry asks.

“What?” Claire doesn’t tear her eyes from her box as she opens it, revealing the glory within. “Cutlery? For pizza? Strange child.”

“Derek says--” but Sherry seems to realize what she’s saying because she stops and clamps her mouth shut. Claire can practically see the thought process behind Sherry’s pale eyes: _screw him._

Claire grabs a slice and it tastes like heaven, like calories and weekends of freedom. She chews with gusto, like she’s never going to eat again. Sherry is the same, not greedy but clearly underfed. That pulls at Claire’s ruined heartstrings, but what can she do? Sherry will go home tomorrow morning and Simmons will keep her under lock and key, maybe let Claire have her again for her birthday if they’re lucky. Their whole lives at the mercy of one single bastard.

The pizza goes all too soon and they are sated with food, and sleepy. Sherry slinks off to bed sometime around ten, and Claire is left alone staring at the empty space on the wall where a normal person might have a TV. She does not know what to think and so she thinks nothing, blank empty thoughts that swim through that lake, which is almost a sea now that she thinks of it. It will deepen tomorrow, and maybe they’ll be able to cross it, maybe they won’t.


End file.
